From therapy to recipe… Welcome to my blog. Here you’ll find reflections, recipes and stories. Whether they’re stories that come from scientific studies or stories that come from my clients themselves, I’m always making connections back to food. Every dish tells a story, and kitchen lessons tend to be life lessons. So here, every other month, I will post a recipe for life. Each one is a life lesson inspired by therapy, sprinkled with a bit of psychology, and linked to a meaningful recipe. My recipes are generally quick, pretty easy, always tasty, sometimes a little bit different and inescapably Greek Cypriot in some way or another. My approach to cooking is simple: it’s about flavours and ingredients that ‘attach’ well together to create something delicious. I’m still a therapist in the kitchen – always trying to understand relationships between things, whether ingredients or people. And it’s noteworthy that wherever my blog includes any reference to a client’s story, I have their full permission to do so and their confidentiality is always maintained.
I hope you’ll be nourished in more than just the food sense.
No man is an island – it’s true. But more than that, no man is a floating island – we are anchored in our relationships, from the very beginning. We aren’t isolated islands. As children, our parents are the stronger and wiser ones we expect to rescue us, and provide refuge to soothing shores when…
My client once told me about a childhood summer holiday where, under the heat of the Mediterranean sun, she hotly refused to eat her squid supper. She had been introduced to calamari by her mum as the ‘circular sister’ of the straight and familiar fish finger, which she dearly loved. As a child, fish fingers…
There is one ingredient that seasons everything in any relationship – just like salt, it will bring out the flavour of the bond between two people. That ingredient is trust. If it’s not right, it absolutely needs adjusting because affects everything. It’s tantamount and it’s tangible – we feel it if it is or isn’t…
Growing up at the Greek table, sharing was an unquestioned part of how food was served. The only claim I could ever make to being on trend is that our family was doing ‘family style’ meals long before it obtained its style status. It was simply just what we did every evening at dinner. When…
Romantic relationships are exactly like emulsifications – you need a combination of ingredients that holds together, and ultimately, that doesn’t split. It needs to be smooth. And generally, if a relationship isn’t smooth, if there are too many bumps in the road that make it unsafe and uncomfortable, we need to take a look at…
It’s been said that people come to therapy to talk about what they don’t want to say. But whether it’s on the couch, in the kitchen or in any other area of life, talking can be difficult, and uncomfortable. It may be the bread and butter of my job, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy…